Is Corbyn really the most disliked party leader ever? Looking at the Net Satisfaction of Party Leaders

There is one Tweet that made me address this blog post’s title question. The tweet was made by Rob Ford, Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester, and shows the rating of 10 party leaders, 10 months after entering their position. It creates two important questions:

What does Ipsos MORI data tell us?

Thanks to @jblumenau who provided the data in a usable format, I have mapped Ipsos MORI data from 1977 – July 2016 to an interactive graph for you to investigate the questions yourself. Overall, it seems Corbyn may not be the most disliked in terms of the ultimately most negative net satisfaction. That would be Foot & Thacher at -56 points and Major at -59 points. It also means he wasn’t the leader who had the most sudden decrease in net satisfaction.

Furthermore both Cameron and Corbyn taking a dive in the ratings outside of the polls could suggest some outside factors which damaged both their ratings (The EU Ref perhaps). However, the upcoming months will be vital for Corbyn. If May performs comparatively well, particularly with her carefully planned and competent cabinet members (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36790710), his position may look untenable in the upcoming leadership election, as you can see, leaders who do comparatively badly in the polls to their opposites don’t tend to last very long. Either way – Corbyn may not be the worst, but he’s certainly not the most liked and that doesn’t exactly bode well for him.